It was 30 years ago this week that the classic film satire film"This is Spinal Tap" was released. Rock, if not Hollywood, has never been the same since. Neither have amps that go "up to 11," guitars that have great sustain and vibrato (or would, if they were actually plugged in) and drummers who may, or may not, have choked to death on another person's vomit.

This is Spinal Tap" (with subtitles)

Billed as a "rockumentary," this Rob Reiner-directed movie focused on the exploits of Spinal Tap, a fictitious English rock band embarked on its first U.S. concert tour in some years. The band's wonderfully dimwitted principal members were portrayed, with off-pitch-perfect accuracy, by American actors Christopher Guest (as lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel), Harry Shearer (as bassist Derek Smalls) and Michael McKean (as lead singer and rhythm guitarist David St. Hubbins).

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"This is Spinal Tap" boasts a wealth of memorable lines. Some favorites include: How much more black could this be? None."; "He was the patron saint of quality footwear"; "Have a good time all the time"; "D-minor... is the saddest of all keys"; "It's such an interesting concept, mixing mime and food"; and the assertion that Boston "is not a big college town."

What is your favorite "Spinal Tap" line or scene? Tell us in the Comments section below.

The film's supporting cast includes Reiner, Billy Crystal, Fran Drescher, Anjelica Huston, "Late Night with David Letterman" band leader Paul Shaffer, Danny Kortchmar, Tony Hendra, Fred Willard, Ed Begley, Jr., and others. All of them clearly took delight in lampooning the world of hard-rock in all its heavy-handed glory.

Alas, "This is Spinal Tap" flopped upon its release in 1984. There were fewer than a dozen people in the audience when I took some friends to see it at Cinema 21 in Mission Valley, the week that it opened in San Diego. It fared little better in other cities.

Happily, this groudbreaking film has since become a cult favorite, for good reason. Make that for many good reasons.

The faux Spinal Tap's faux discography included the less-than-classic albums "Intravenus de Milo," "The Sun Never Sweats," "Shark Sandwich" and the then-new "Smell the Glove," each replete with suitably inane mock album covers. The real songs the band performed in the film (and on several real tours that followed) included "Hell Hole," "Sex Farm," "Big Bottom," "Heavy Duty," "Stonehenge" and "Tonight I'm Going to Rock You Tonight."

Some famous musicians, Eddie Van Halen included, did not regard "This Is Spinal Tap" as either a comedy or a satire. Why not? Because it rang too true to life for them. That the band Spinal Tap seemed like bumbling dolts as often as not was beside the point.

"Spinal Tap was never supposed to be an incompetent band," Shearer affirmed in a 2001 U-T San Diego interview, timed to promote the band's concert here that summer at Humphreys.

"To us it was more a mediocre band," he continued. "They could play; it was more that they made awful choices, and it was a satire of their choices. In the movie, the idea was that they'd stuck around for a depressingly long time, without ever making it or getting booted out. So, if you look at it that way, they've been flailing away ever since."

Some of the rock acts that inspired Spinal Tap, in varying degrees, include Saxon, Uriah Heep, Judas Priest (whose lead singer, Rob Halford, is a long-time part-time San Diego resident), Jethro Tull and more.

"We're at least as loud now as Deep Purple used to be," Shearer noted in our 2001 interview. "Of course, everybody of a certain age is loud now because they've all lost their hearing. So being loud has changed its meaning over the years."

Or, as Shearer put it more succinctly in a 1992 U-T San Diego interview: "Don't let anybody tell you it's not fun to get up on stage and play dumb music real loud."

Spinal Tap last performed in 2009. Guest has hinted that the band may reactivate to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the film. A new Blu-Ray version is already out.

As for us, we are ready to once again break like the wind (to invoke the name of one of Spinal Tap's less-than-epic songs). Are you?